Swinging a Sword at the Waves
by Cabbitshivers
Summary: Being incorporeal is something that Fujiwara no Sai should have been able to deal with by now, but some things just aren't so easy to accept...
1. Chapter 1

**Swinging A Sword At The Waves**  
  
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Chapter One

_Kono Me Ni Wa Utsuru_

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A quiet whimper broke the still silence of the humid summer night. Artificial light from the streetlamp across the road shone in through the naked window and splashed bluish-white squares across the far wall. In the darkness enveloping the rest of the room there was the slight rustle of shifting sheets as a small figure rolled over and ineffectually batted at a nightmare assailant. The quiet sounds were disturbing, echoing slightly in the spacious room with the frosted edges of fear that disrupted the peaceful night. Within nightmare fabrications the dreamer battled against unseen attackers, incorporeal and omnipotent in the nature of all of illusions creatures.

Another low whimper drew the attention of the rooms one other occupant. Until the nightmare sounds had woken him he had been drifting unaware in the ethereal state that was as close to mortal sleep as the straying dead, like he, could achieve. Slanted eyes the second-to-last colour of the rainbow opened slowly and travelled over the room to settle on the figure tossing slightly among the bed sheets. Lavender painted lips eternally stained since his death parted as the indigo eyes blinked mildly in surprise.

"Hikaru?" He questioned, rising to his knees and leaning over the figure on the bed. He was bending down further for a closer look when the figure rolled over abruptly, flinging out a wildly flailing arm that caught the violet-haired observer squarely on the jaw and sent him reeling back down to the floor.

Lying flat on his back, Sai listened inattentively to the incoherent mutterings of the dreaming boy and silently wondered at the strange workings of the universe. Only in a world where Chaos reigned could there be a strange metaphysical law which allowed one person to be able to see and to touch him, while the rest of the world remained oblivious to his presence and used his incorporeal personage as free air space. Though, despite how rude the world had become since his death, it still carried the stones of Go; so he could forgive the oblivious living for walking through something they didn't know was there.

"No! Don't puddat'ere…"

Sai lifted his head as from out the mumbled incoherent ramblings emerged a somewhat clear, though heavily slurred and barely understandable sentence. It was followed immediately by another.

"Ow! Dat hurt, stupid!"

Slowly pulling himself back up to the bedside, he watched curiously as the dreamer continued to mumble his dream-rantings, focusing on the rapid movement beneath the closed eyelids while keeping a steady eye out for more randomly swung arms.

"17, 8…"

Sai blinked, then felt his lips thinning as he smiled. The boy was even playing Go in his sleep. He admired his determination, and his skill in how quickly he had picked it up. He'd only been playing for little over a year and a half now – with tutoring from Sai – and he was already well on the way to becoming a brilliant player. He was trying for the pro's… already an Insei. He was determined to catch Touya. Sai knew exactly why he'd been the one to see the stain of Torajiiro's blood and set him free from the Goban and his seemingly endless slumber – the boy had the soul of a master within him. Perhaps it was the way he approached each game as though it were another test of skill, or maybe the way he showed sudden bouts of genius in the placing of his stones. Or it could even be in the way his eyes burned as he played - with a fire he claimed to see in others, but failed to notice in himself. Near the beginning of his training he had always commented on the seriousness he saw in all of his or Sai's opponent's eyes, as though the game was a battle they could not afford to lose. He had never realized that that same look of determination was shining in his own eyes as he fought to protect against the death of his stones.

"1, 7..."

Sai wished wistfully that he could watch the game that Hikaru was playing in his dreams, but abruptly changed his mind when the boy flung himself over again and kicked wildly at his bed sheets, shouting.

"No! No – get away from me! NO!!!!"

**THUMP**

"Hikaru!"

The fourteen-year-old boy sat up slowly, eyes squinted painfully shut as he tenderly felt his head for the bump he knew would soon be forming on it. "Itatatatataaaa…." He hissed, fingers finding and probing the painful spot on his skull that had met the floor before the rest of him. "Stupid Touya..."

"Hikaru?"

The green-eyed boy ceased his squinting and looked up, meeting Sai's concerned gaze with a sleepily annoyed stare of his own.

"Daijoubu, de gozaru ka?"

Hikaru nodded, then abruptly looked pained as his bruised brain battered against his skull. "Too much Kenshin, Sai. But yeah, I'm okay." He rubbed at his head again. "Just some really whack dream."

"Touya?" He'd heard Hikaru mention the name a moment ago, and decided that he could be correct in assuming that the other boy had something to do with the lump forming on his student and host's head.

"Yeah." Hikaru muttered, slowly rising to his feet and turning to sit on his bed. "He was trying to squash me with a Go stone."

"How was that possible?" Sai questioned, a perplexed look on his face.

"They were really big."

"Oh."

Hikaru chuckled lightly, then immediately flinched, as the sound didn't agree with his poor, aching head.  Scooting further back onto his bed, he crawled over his rumpled sheets and slid back the window of his second-story bedroom.  He sighed, closing his eyes as a cool breeze greeted his face.  "Man, that dream was weird…" he mumbled, turning his face further into the breeze and smiling slightly as it ruffled through his fringe, pushing the bleached strands back from his heated cheeks.  It felt great against his forehead, a cool contrast to the hot sweat that had dotted it moments before.  It even seemed to be easing the throbbing in his abused head somewhat…

Sai felt a small smile forming on his lips as he watched Hikaru's antics.  The boy was carefree; entirely true to himself… he would never go the way of the sheep if he could help it.  Sai somewhat envied him the freedom that he was unaware of possessing.  "You want to tell me about it?" He asked quietly.

"Hm?" Hikaru turned from the window, shifting his half-closed emerald eyes to the kneeling figure just beyond the edge of his bed. "What?"

"Your dream." Sai affirmed. "Sometimes they can mean something.  If you tell me of your dream then I could tell you what the meaning behind it is."

Hikaru's eyes widened slightly, meeting Sai's with just a little more alertness. "It was just a dream, Sai.  A stupid nightmare.  It has no meaning."

"Maybe it does."

"It doesn't."

"How do you know, Hikaru?"

"It's **MY** dream."

"That doesn't mean anything." The stubbornness in Sai just wouldn't give in. "Most often the meanings are hidden from the dreamers themselves."

Hikaru's shadowed-emerald glare fixed itself on Sai, grass and ocean eyes meeting in a battle of determination that lasted until the pounding in Hikaru's head forced him to break the stare.  He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the windowsill, the cool night breeze ruffling his hair and easing the pain in his skull minutely.

"I no longer dream, Hikaru." The soft voice of Sai spoke after long minutes of silence. "I thought that maybe I could find meaning in yours..."

Hikaru sighed loudly. "So I dream for you now as well, eh?"  He didn't even bother trying to keep his voice light.  This headache was really starting to annoy him… and Touya chasing after him with giant Go stones on a very large Goban was **not** something he really wanted to share… with anyone.

Sai exhaled quietly and smiled through the sadness he could feel gathering between them both. "No.  Your dreams are all your own, Hikaru.  I only wished for you to share yours with me so that even I might be able to learn something."  Sai knew he was sounding hopeful, but try as he might he could never keep his emotions from expressing themselves through his voice.

Hikaru sighed again.  He could hear the hope in Sai's voice – it was as plain as day to anyone who had spent almost two years with the spectre, and as usual he found it almost impossible to deny the one-thousand year old ghost anything he really wanted. "All right." He conceded, maintaining the pretence of being annoyed despite the slight smile that he aimed at Sai. "I'll let you analyse my dream, but only if you promise to let me sleep in tomorrow morning.  No waking me up early, got it?"

"Yes, yes!" Sai smiled, nodding eagerly.

Hikaru flinched. "And try not to talk too loud.  My head hurts…" he mumbled, rubbing at the knot starting to form at the back of his head behind his right ear.

"Sorry, Hikaru."

"Eh." The boy waved it off. "My dream was really weird, so no laughing, okay? I'll try to give you as much detail as I can remember…"

Sai wriggled on his knees in anticipation.  He was going to help Hikaru, **and** hear about the game of Go he was playing in his sleep! It was good to have this interaction with the boy - nowadays they hardly ever spoke about anything that didn't concern Go (not that Sai minded, of course), but even then a normal-length conversation was rare.  He missed talking with Hikaru.  Sometimes Sai couldn't help but feel neglected and unappreciated, but he supposed that was because Hikaru didn't need him quite so much anymore, and maybe because of that he was also feeling a little bit… jealous?  Hikaru was progressing beautifully in Go, was placing his stones in intelligent, strategically sound places.  He didn't need Sai to play for him anymore.  And so, Sai envied him, longing to touch the stones, to feel their familiar weight against his fingers and to be the one to place them on the board instead of Hikaru.  That didn't help to keep the air between them calm and easy at all, and more often than not their energies clashed quite violently, resulting in the arguments that were becoming more and more frequent as the months passed.

Sai hated fighting with Hikaru, hated feeling so bad and making the boy suffer for his own phantom inadequacies.  It wasn't Hikaru's fault that Sai couldn't hold the stones.  It wasn't Hikaru's fault that Sai had thrown himself into that river a thousand years ago and taken away any chance of **his** fingers being the ones to master the Hand of God.  It wasn't fair on either of them.  So it was times like these, when Hikaru allowed Sai to help him and to share something personal between them, that Sai treasured with all of his heart. 

Returning his attention to Hikaru, Sai smiled euphorically and waited for the boy to start speaking again.  After all, Hikaru was going to share his dream with him.

"I remember…" The boy started, quietly and introspective. "That at first there was no colour.  Aside from black and white, that is.  It was just all different shades of grey.  There was a wind, and it was cold, and it smelt like dried leaves do when you scrunch them up in your fist, you know?"

Sai nodded.  He remembered how that smell had filled the air in the mid-autumn months, when he was playing Go with the Emperor or one of his guests out in the palace gardens. 

"I started looking around, wandering all over the place until I realized that I was standing on a giant Goban."

Sai blinked.  A Goban? Settings were the central-points in dreams… so it had something to do with his playing?

"There were already stones laid out, but they were way bigger than me so I couldn't see who was winning, though somehow I knew that it was white leading by only half a moku.  For some reason that scared me.  Usually I don't feel much emotion in my dreams, so that was really weird."

Sai nodded again.  It was true that Hikaru rarely made any motions in his sleep; he had just always taken the boy to be a mellow dreamer – and that's what made the nightmare this evening such an odd occurrence.

"Do you remember which you were?" He asked. 

Hikaru shook his head.  "I think I was white, but I kept feeling as though I was playing as black as well.  It was strange.  Anyway, I kept getting this sense that I had lost something, and that whatever I did I had to find it – that it was really important to the game.  I started running, trying to find whatever it was, but a black stone moved into the way and trapped me.  I tried to move it, ya know, pushing at it and stuff – but it just grew bigger and got even heavier so I couldn't budge it at all.  And my reflection in the stone… it wasn't even me! Even though when I looked at it I was thinking 'Oh, yeah, man I look a mess', it wasn't my face at all!"

"Whose was it?" Sai asked, knowing the answer to this question was going to be very important.  There was definitely a hidden meaning within Hikaru's dream, and seeing someone else's reflection in a mirror was most certainly a sign of ill omen.  "Did you recognise the face?"

"Aa." Hikaru nodded. "But that's another thing that was weird.  Half of the face was completely covered in shadow; the other half was covered in a red light.  And Sai, the other half of the face was you."

Sai grit his teeth to keep from gasping.  Not good, no, not good at all.  Hikaru seeing his face in place of his own was definitely a sign of there being something wrong… but what was it that was the problem?

"And that's when things got even weirder, 'cause Touya showed up out of nowhere, really huge, and ordered that I continue the game with him.  I refused, thinking that I still had to find what I was looking for, but he kept insisting that the game was already finished.  Then he started playing anyway, and I had no choice but to fight him.  **Then** he tried to squish me, and I woke up."

Sai's face took on an almost unnatural-looking expression as he concentrated, and Hikaru watched him at first with a mild amount of trepidation, which quickly grew to worry as the spectre remained deathly quiet.

"Sai?"

After a moment Sai raised his head and settled his almost stone-like indigo eyes upon the worried green of Hikaru's.

"There's definitely a meaning in your dream, Hikaru." The ghost said quietly after a moment. "And I'm afraid it's not very good."

Hikaru could barely keep from swallowing in nervousness at Sai's tone.  He didn't really buy into all the dream-meaning mumbo-jumbo stuff, but the thousand year-old spirit was certainly creeping him out with his strange behaviour.

"Most people don't dream in colour, but aren't usually aware of it because they naturally assume that it is.  The fact that you were aware suggests that the colours or lack thereof hold especially significant meaning.  The white stones possibly represent the lighter side of yourself – your hope and positiveness, the part of you that deals with the day-to-day things in life, while the black stones could represent the unknown part of yourself, the hidden things you keep away from even yourself, or possibly even your emotions."

Hikaru's eyes flashed slightly. "Are you saying I delude myself?"

Sai shrugged. "Everyone does, Hikaru.  I do – and I'm..."

"You don't need to say, Sai."

Sai nodded quickly to hide his sudden regret. "Aa… To continue, to have these two parts of yourself fighting each other tells me that you fear both failure, and exposure, so you are fighting to keep those parts of yourself hidden – which would explain why white was winning.  Black was being subdued, hidden away – but barely." Sai's eyes raised and met the almost wide-eyed stare of the fourteen-year-old sitting on his bed.  "There's something you're hiding from yourself that is taking a lot of effort to keep secret, Hikaru.  And the fact that there was a wind in your dream – which represents unsettled emotions and a need for change – only strengthens the belief that it's something emotional that's being hidden."

"So what does that mean?" Hikaru asked. "That one day I'm gonna wake up and whatever I've been hiding from myself is gonna be there?"

"I don't know." Sai replied, dropping his face to look at his hands. " B-but the face in the Go stone… that's not good, Hikaru.  It's not good that it's mine.  The shadow… the shadowed part is the part of you that you hate.  And the other side – the side that is me – that it is red could mean any number of things.  Red is a complex colour representing passion, heat, fire, anger, and the feelings that one is not efficient enough." Sai swallowed, wishing that the next part didn't need to be said.  "The face… could mean that you are… comparing yourself to me, not liking what you see… and then hating me for it."

Sai waited, but there was no sound from the boy sitting on his bed.  "Do you hate me, Hikaru?" He asked.

There was a slight creaking from the bed, from the direction of where Hikaru was sitting, but Sai didn't dare look up.  Aside from the man who had been his co-instructor at Igo for the Emperor, no one had ever hated him.  He didn't know if he could deal with seeing a look of such loathing on the open and smiling face of his host.  He didn't know if he could take it on the face of anyone, let alone Hikaru!

There was a heavy sigh from directly in front of him, and then he felt the strange, distantly familiar sensation of hands settling on his shoulders.  Was Hikaru touching him? That was odd… Hikaru **never** touched him.  It had always been the other way around – Sai hugging Hikaru when he was delighted about something or another.  Hikaru didn't like to touch him and hadn't done it save the one time when he had tripped and reached out to steady himself against the nearest thing he could reach – which had been Sai.  He had said that Sai felt strange; sort of fuzzy around the edges, and that he hadn't liked it much.  That had hurt when he'd told him that, but…

"No.  Sometimes you annoy me, Sai.  But I don't hate you."

Sai's eyes rose to meet Hikaru's, the rich indigo instantly trapped in a penetrating stare of shadowed emerald.

"Besides, it was just a stupid dream and it means absolutely nothing.  Either that, or you're just really crappy at deciphering dreams.  How did you learn that stuff anyway?"

Sai blinked at the rapid change of direction the conversation had just suddenly taken.  Since when had Hikaru become adept at diverting the trains of discussion? The boy was, what, fourteen? Sai wasn't even that skilled at it and before he had died he had been a constant member in the Emperor's Court since he was ten! Maybe it was because children talked a lot more in this time… it would account for the way he could so easily distract him when he was getting overly excited about something that Hikaru thought to be trivial – like the microwave, for instance.  Sai still couldn't figure out where they hid the fire youkai in that tiny metal box.

"I - I was taught by an old Miko when I was a young boy.  I had been having nightmares and she offered to teach me to decipher their meanings myself so I wouldn't keep waking her up at night."

Hikaru grinned at him. "You annoyed a shrine priestess? How old were you?"

"Um," Sai thought for a moment.  It was so long ago, but he did recall that the nightmares had started assaulting him a few months before an incident with a neighbouring Village boy, so that would have made him… "I may have been nine." He replied.

Hikaru's brow raised itself slightly as he took this in. "You know…" He started, somewhat hesitantly, as if unsure how Sai was going to react to what he was going to say. "You never talk about your past much.  All I know is that you taught Go to the Emperor, and was accused of cheating by your crappy opponent who was the one that was **really** cheating.  I don't even know how old you were when you… well… I mean…" He screwed his face up in disgust at himself.  God, he could be so idiotic sometimes. "What I'm saying is – how come you never talk about it?"

Sai shrugged, his face impassive but eyes holding the weight of those thousand years that pressed behind them. "It makes me sad." He replied quietly.

In almost two years of sharing his existence with the rather spontaneous spirit, Hikaru had come to recognize almost all of his expressions.  And even if he couldn't sense the sadness that licked at the edge of his awareness with eerie persistency, the look alone in his symbiont's eye would have told him that this conversation was not going to continue tonight.

"Eh, I'm tired." Hikaru stated, stifling a yawn and changing the tide of the conversation once again. "And my headache's gone now, so I'm gonna go back to sleep." Sliding back onto the bed, the boy swivelled around and lay back down, dragging the thin summer sheet back up over himself.  "Goodnight, Sai." He said, his voice bouncing off of the wall he was facing to reach the spectral ears of the ghost still kneeling behind him.

"Goodnight, Hikaru." Sai replied softly. 

After a few minutes of silence the sound of Hikaru's deep and even breathing started to fill the room.  A breeze still entered in through the window the boy had left open, occasionally flipping at the corners of the posters on the walls, but still remaining mostly silent and gentle.

Sai sighed heavily into the quiet, then turned his back to the wall again and folded himself up to rest.  Closing his eyes he settled into himself.  Maybe someday God would grant him dreams again…

That would be nice.

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A/N – Should I continue? I'm warning you now that this fic is going to deal very much with the relationship between Sai and Hikaru (SaixHika! Woooo!), and is going to mostly fixate on Sai and the inadequacies he feels and has to suffer with being incorporeal.  It will get rather dark in later chapters, I fear, so I will have to raise the rating at some point to R.  For now, she'll just be good old PG.

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Dictionary:-

_Daijoubu, de gozaru ka?_ = All right, I ask? (Or something to that extent.) It's an exceedingly polite reaffirmation, that combines both confirming what you've just said, and putting the person(s) you've said it to at a higher station/ranking than yourself.  De gozaru is something that Kenshin from 'Rurouni Kenshin' says when in his 'Rurouni-mode'.

_Youkai_ = Demon. (For all of those who have not seen or read Inuyasha.)

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	2. Chapter 2

**Swinging a Sword at the Waves**

Chapter Two  
_Kotoba Yori Kissu De_

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Hikaru bit back another frustrated sigh and once again began to play with his food.

The voice's of his friends Waya and Isumi chatting animatedly about one thing or another lapped at the edges of his mind like the tips of fleeting waves, as he pushed another one of his French fries through the small puddle of ketchup on his empty burger wrapper.

He wasn't really paying much attention to what they were talking about, though the words 'Go' and 'Tournament' were being mentioned in the same sentence often enough that he should be sitting rapt and attentive to their every word. He still had last nights dream on his mind, and Sai's translation of it, and what the ghost had revealed of the inner workings of his subconscious mind was annoying the hell out of him. That Sai's deciphering had given away nothing positive at all was frustrating, and the ghost's continual silence wasn't helping much, either. He could see him out of the corner of his eye, sitting beside him in the space he unconsciously left for him on the plastic bench, arms folded within his sleeves, head bowed, and brooding. The light blanket of melancholy coming from Sai was probably adding to his current mood, if not completely responsible for it.

Damnitt! He was supposed to be having a good time, not once again thinking about that stupid dream he'd had! His friends had dragged him off here to McDonald's specifically to take his mind off of whatever had been bothering him all morning and had caused him to lose his first and second games to Waya, though they knew he hated the food here. He was **supposed** to be sitting down, eating his Big Mac with something resembling gusto, drowning his fries and his sorrow in tomato ketchup, and having a generally good time with his friends. Instead, he was sitting down, placed between a gloomy ghost, a fidgeting Fuku, and getting kicked in the shins each time Iijima who sat across from him shifted his tall, lanky body. He wasn't even really eating. He'd managed to swallow down half of his burger before Waya had stolen the rest, and his chips had gotten so cold now that they tasted like cardboard, even with all the ketchup he had smothered them in. It also wasn't helping much that a loud, complaining brat was in the next booth over who noisily shouted his displeasure every thirty seconds. Hikaru wasn't sure who was annoying him the most at the moment; the loud brat, the mother trying to shush it, or the pouting ghost moping next to him. He shoved another cold chip into his mouth and forced himself to swallow it. He could barely contain the grimace that wanted to swim across his features. Gross – it really was disgusting.

He turned his attention to Waya and Isumi, and tried to fixate himself on their conversation. They were discussing something about a recent win a 5-Dan had secured against a 6-Dan – Hikaru hadn't caught their names – and were currently engaged deep in a systematic discussion and dissimilation of the moves. Hikaru was just beginning to catch the drift of the game being discussed, when the brat let out a loud screech and the flimsy thread of his attention was broken. He looked to the side, flinching at the volume, then became concerned when he saw Sai. The ghost was still looking worried, and his silence was becoming disturbing. What should be an intriguing and interesting discussion which would normally have the ghost riveted to whatever Isumi and Waya were saying was being completely passed over by the spirit. It was as if he wasn't even listening. He just sat there, looking down at the table in front of him, toying with the fan that rested between his shifting fingers.

'_There's something you're hiding from yourself that is taking a lot of effort to keep secret, Hikaru…_'

The green-eyed boy blinked and shoved another cold and drowned fry into his mouth. Why couldn't he get last night out of his head! It was just a stupid dream, and a stupid analysis. He didn't even believe in dream meanings, so why the hell was it all bothering him so damn much? It wasn't as if dreams could tell you the secrets of the future, or anything, and it wasn't as if Touya Akira was going to come trouncing into McDonald's to squash him with a giant Go stone.

He tried to shake off the thickening murk that was hazing his mind, but whether it was coming from either Sai, or himself, it didn't seem to want to budge. He sighed, loudly, and reached for his soda, hoping to wash down the nauseating aftertaste of the fries in a way he'd like to wash last night's occurrences out of his mind. They had cost him two games already today. If he kept up with his current strength of concentration he'd lose his games for the rest of the week. Despair greeted him at that thought. He'd never catch up to Touya and show him his true strength if he kept letting some stupid thing like a bad dream get in the way of his winning the games… Stupid dreams. And stupid Touya, too.

As he took long sip of his raspberry coke, swishing it around in his mouth to rid it of the ketchup taste, he felt a sudden slight constriction of emotions around him, just as he heard a small, shocked-sounding gasp to his right. Sai. His throat tightened a little at the first sound he had heard the specter make since he had awoken that morning to his silence, and he swallowed the liquid just as he turned to see what was wrong with the ghost, hearing him call his name at the same time.

:"Hikaru?":

:"What is it, Sai? What's wrong?": He looked at the spirit, whose face was turned completely away from him. Following where Sai was looking, his gaze fell upon a couple in the booth across from them. His lips curled in annoyance as he saw what they were doing. Kissing. Though that in itself wasn't such a bad thing, doing it in public was just something people didn't do. It was private. That they were lip-locked in the middle of a crowded McDonald's restaurant was tantamount to vulgarism, and that was something that Hikaru wanted no part in. He turned away from the scene, mildly put out, and went back to sipping his drink. :"That's gross.": He said.

He saw out of the corner of his eye Sai turn towards him, though he missed the shocked look on his face. He heard it in his voice, however, when the ghost spoke to him.

:"Aren't you going to do something, Hikaru?":

One of Hikaru's eyebrows rose. :"Do what?": He asked, taking a sip of cola. :"It's their choice to be doing that. It's none of my business, Sai.":

:"But-": Spluttered the ghost. :"But he's eating her!":

It was lucky that Hikaru had just finished swallowing his mouthful of drink; else he would have found it spraying from his nose all over the table. :"WHAT?": He shrieked. He shot his eyes back over at the kissing couple, and focused on their merging lips to see if there actually was any sort of eating involved. What he saw only convinced him that the ghost that was permanently attached to his consciousness was also marginally insane. :"What are you talking about! They're just kissing!":

Sai looked at him, horrified. :"You mean there's a name for this!": He asked, sounding almost disgusted. :"He's eating her, Hikaru! Eating!":

Yep. Sai was insane. Either that or he didn't have a clue what kissing was… oh… O_h_. Well… that was something he hadn't thought about before. Sai was from a thousand years ago, and kissing had been introduced by the Europeans when they had first started trading with Japan. That would have been, like, what? Five hundred and something years ago? Or was it less than that? And then there was Shuusaku, who wasn't likely to have been exposed to the perversion that it was back then… Hikaru felt like smacking himself on the forehead, but after a moment's decision decided that it wouldn't be the smartest thing to do with his friends around, who were liable to ask him why he had suddenly whacked himself on the head for no apparent reason. He sighed, flushing lightly. Another thing to explain to Sai. How was he going to word this? And how was it that the spirit had gone through two years aware in this time without having ever seen someone kissing? Surely he had seen his mother and father kissing each other? But come to think of it, he hadn't caught them doing that himself in quite a while.

:"He's not eating her, Sai.": He said, breaking the slightly hysterical ghost out of his growing horror. :"It's kissing. They're not hurting each other.":

Sai looked at him, his indigo eyes wide in his pale face. :"But she's moaning. Are you sure he's not eating her? He could be a youkai.":

Hikaru blinked, and then concentrated. Beneath all the chatter at his and the surrounding tables, and the whinging little brat in the booth behind his, he could faintly hear the sound of the girl moaning. He cringed. :"She's moaning because she likes it, Sai.": He told him reluctantly, trying not to think about anything that was going on in the booth across from theirs, though considering that that was what he was discussing it was an impossible task to achieve. :"And he's not a youkai. They don't exist.":

:"What about in the microwave?":

:"That's not a youkai, Sai!": Hikaru sighed. The ghost was silent for a moment, and

Hikaru looked over to see him watching the couple with what he knew by experience to be a curious look in his eyes.

:"What is kissing, Hikaru?":

Hikaru grimaced. He really didn't want to have to explain. :"It's a custom that the English people brought over when they landed here. It's a sign of affection between two people. People like it, so I guess that's why they do it.":

Sai looked away from the couple and met Hikaru's eyes with burning curiosity. :"Yes, Hikaru, but **how**?":

Hikaru's expression became pained, and he shifted his eyes away from the inquisitive ones of his symbiont. :"Well, see…": He brought his hands down onto his lap and twisted his fingers together nervously. :"When two people like each other they… um… show it by, um, pressing their lips together, and, ah… sucking.":

:"Sucking?": Sai questioned, raising one eyebrow in interest. :"At each others lips?":

Hikaru nodded.

:"And that feels good?":

Hikaru nodded again.

:"But they're not just sucking, Hikaru.":

Sai sounded polite, but he knew that the spirit wouldn't let it rest until he knew it all. He spared a glance back at that disturbing booth, and noticed that yes, they were slightly more than just sucking now.

:"Well, you see…": He continued, his face becoming decidedly flushed now. :"When two people **really**like each other… they… use their tongues.":

Sai cocked his head to the side. :"To do what?":

Hikaru was sure he was tomato red by now. :"To, um, play with the other person's tongue.":

:"Play? How?":

Hikaru was certain now that his embarrassment was going to send him exploding up to the ceiling. Why did Sai have to ask so many questions? Couldn't he tell that he didn't want to answer them anymore?

:"How, Hikaru? How?": The ghost prodded.

:"They… they put them in each others mouths and…": Hikaru's eyes widened. He was _not_ having this conversation:"I don't wanna talk about it! No more questions, Sai!": And he clammed up.

:"But Hikaruuuuuuu….": Sai wined.

:"No!": Hikaru shot back, turning away from the ghost at his side and back to his decidedly dead-looking fries. :"This isn't something that you talk about with other people!": The fries looked like victims from a horrid murder scene, doused in the ketchup like they were. Hikaru wasn't sure he could bring himself to put another anywhere near his mouth.

:"But you're not other people, Hikaru.": Sai's importunate voice floated through his mind.

:"No, Sai.": He said, wrapping the fries and sauce up in the burger wrapper they were on.

:"But-":

"No!" And he slammed the wrapper full of cold fries and ketchup onto the table, making all of the occupants at it jump and the specter at his side to fall silent abruptly.

"Ah, Shindou?" Someone asked.

Hikaru lifted his eyes; aware suddenly of the attention another argument with Sai had yet again brought to him. Everyone at the table was staring at him, and he'd probably spoken that last "no" out loud, too. Waya had that odd expression on his face again that he'd been wearing most of that morning, as if he was the one who had been eating the cardboard fries, and Isumi looked even more sad than usual, almost as though he was regretful that Hikaru appeared to be losing his mind.

"Are you alright?" Iijima asked him quietly, almost cautiously, Hikaru thought. His face flushed with heat in a mixture of embarrassment and anger. Shooting a glare at the specter at his side, he was even more embarrassed to see that his outburst had also managed to snap the locked lips of the kissing couple apart, and they were also staring over at him with expressions of sane people marveling over a crazy one.

"Great," He thought:"Thanks, Sai.":

He heard Sai apologize in his mind as he returned his eyes back to Waya, who was looking down at the jumbled mess of ketchup, fries and burger wrapper that he'd smeared all over the table and his hand in his fit of negativity. He groaned, and rolled his eyes heavenward.

"Yeah, I'm alright." He groused. "Just replaying this morning's games in my head." He reached for a napkin in front of Ochi and attempted to clean the mess from his hand. The fries looked even worse now than they did before.

"What's up with that anyway, Shindou?" Waya asked as Hikaru cleaned between his fingers. "You haven't played that badly in months. Your mistakes were like those you find in the '_Igo for Dummies_' manual, and you were zoned out for most of the morning. Then, you stared at that kissing couple for three minutes and killed your fries."

As Hikaru's face flooded with heat, Waya leaned over the table separating them and pushed his face uncomfortably close to Hikaru's.

"You're not doing drugs, are you?" Waya asked him in quiet audacity.

Hikaru jerked his head back. "No!" He yelled, his eyes narrow and flashing. He could hear Sai chuckling beside him and it only served to fuel his frustration. "What the hell made you think that!" :"And you shut up over there!":

Waya sat back. "Come on, Shindou!" He complained exasperatedly. "You've always been a little weird. And anyway, I'm just kidding. You didn't need to take it so personally."

Hikaru slouched down in his seat, his left shoulder touching the arm of Fuku and his right feeling the familiar fuzziness of Sai. He crossed his arms and glared. "It didn't sound like you were kidding," He grumbled.

"Well I was. And are you gonna eat that?"

"Eat what?" He muttered.

"The apple pie."

"Not mine," Hikaru turned his face away and glared at one of the paintings that lined the walls.

"Oh," Waya sounded disappointed. "Fuku?"

"No," The other boy replied.

"But I'm really hungry."

"Buy your own, Waya."

Hikaru sighed, and let the irritation drain out of him. It wasn't going to work. Getting angry wouldn't help get last night's conversation with Sai out of his mind, nor would it correct the two losses he'd sustained that morning. Regretfully, he made a decision. It wasn't one he was happy with, in fact he was infuriated that he even had to make it, but thinking about it he decided that he would pretty much be worthless for any serious Go until he had a severe conversation with the ghost at his side. And he couldn't really do that in a McDonald's restaurant.

:"Move, Sai.": He said, turning on the bench seat.

:"Hikaru?":

:"We're leaving.":

"Shindou?" Isumi asked.

"Make up some excuse to Sensei for me, will you?" Hikaru said as he slid out of the bench, grabbing his bag at his feet.

"Why? Where are you going?" Waya questioned.

:"Hikaru?":

"Home," Hikaru answered. "I'm not up to playing, today." :"We need to have a talk, Sai.":

He ignored the further questions of his friends as he left the restaurant. He could feel their eyes burning through his backpack into his back even as he emerged out onto the sidewalk, busy with people who regardless of how dexterous he or they were, jostled him from side to side in their hurry. For a moment he wished he was like Sai, able to pass through crowds without having shoulders or bags, and sometimes even feet colliding with another part of his person. But when the natural afterthought of what it would feel like to have people actually _pass_ through his body made him shudder, he put all considerations of being Sai out of his mind.

Stupid Sai. Damnitt. The ghost did nothing but complicate his life in the most chaotic way imaginable. First he had to attach himself to his soul, then he made him throw up, and then he got him addicted to the game of Go which all too soon became the air in his lungs and the blood in his veins and all because Sai just **had** to attain the Hand of God. And now Hikaru was in a situation where he just **had** to prove himself to Touya, so they were both stuck, really, in this horrible glut of having to prove something to themselves, and neither of them giving the other an inch.

:"Hikaru?": Came Sai's dulcet tones, sounding almost cautious. For the hundredth time since Sai became attached to him Hikaru found himself wondering just how much more of a female he could be. Then immediately felt bad for even thinking it. Though Sai sometimes looked female with his long hair and stained lips, and sometimes acted as though he was barely older than Fuku, Sai played Go as if he was a Shogun planning the battle of his life, and no female could **ever** play Go like that.

"What?" He sighed, immediately regretful. He knew what Sai was going to say next.

:"It's about my dream analysis, isn't it?":

Hikaru exhaled. "Yeah."

:"I'm sorry, Hikaru. If you want to talk about it…":

"Not particularly," Hikaru rebutted sourly. "But it's not as if I have a choice. If I want to forget this we're going to have to talk about it."

:"Forget?": Sai echoed. Hikaru could feel his confusion. :"But why should you want to forget, Hikaru? It's important!":

"It's just a dream, Sai," He said, swiveling his shoulders to avoid making contact with a man moving swiftly in the opposite direction.

:"They're not just dreams, Hikaru!": Sai tried to enforce. :"They're insights into your subconscious! They have **meaning**! You should listen to yours, not ignore it.":

"Yeah, well maybe you got it **wrong**, Sai! Did ya ever think about that?"

Sai's face became lit with righteous anger. :"I did not!": He shouted back. :"I interpreted it right!":

Hikaru's eyes flashed. "Say's you!"

:"And a Shinto Priestess!": Sai reminded him furiously.

"I don't care!" Hikaru shouted, turning a corner sharply and striding down the different street. He could hear Sai's sleeves snapping in the air as he flapped them emphatically in the corner of his vision.

:"But, Hikaru!":

"I have the prelim's coming up!" He snapped, his glare fixed on the pedestrian crossing glimpsed through the thinning crowd of perambulators. With an angry jerk he hiked the strap of his slipping backpack up higher over his shoulder. "I can't afford to be distracted by stupid dreams and your stupid interpretation of them!"

:"But, Hikaru!":

Sai's whining just made him even angrier. "I can barely afford what mistakes I make by myself, as it is!" He yelled. "Touya's so far ahead now, and if I don't move up to a pro soon, the distance between us is going to double! It's your fault I lost those two games this morning!"

:"Hikaru?":

Sai's whinging had taken on a strange edge, but Hikaru was too worked up now to pay any special attention to it, or the slight compression of concerned emotions surrounding him. "If you had kept your '_interpretations'_ to yourself I wouldn't have been distracted thinking about whatever the hell it was that you seem to think that I'm '_hiding'_ from myself, and--"

:"Hikaru!":

A definite edge this time. Frustrated beyond imagining, irate passion making the muscles of his arms and legs tremble inside of his skin, he spun on the spot and confronted the wide-eyed spirit a meter behind him.

"What!" He demanded; voice clear and loud, just as the sound of a horn blasted to his left and the ground beneath his feet shuddered. Why was Sai looking at him like that, with his mouth wide open and arms stretched out as if he were about to grab something?

'_God_,' He thought, as realization hit hard and fast - coinciding with the agonized yell that suddenly rent his brain, and compressed the fear around him so hard that it hurt.

Sai was screaming.

:"NO!":

His eyes closed as the chant rose in his head. _I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead_. And the impact and derangement of movement went almost unfelt in the cocoon of panic and despair that Sai's emotions had slammed down around him. His vision was yanked sideways; the landscape around him smearing as though it was a child's finger-painting. He thought he screamed, but he couldn't remember opening his mouth. His gut wrenched, and for a moment it felt as though the core of himself was pulled out from inside and flung over his shoulder. In the next moment that came he was sure he was dead.

It wasn't until the sound of the wailing horn and screeching tires passed through into his right ear, and he felt the cold ground hard beneath his knees that he considered that maybe he wasn't dead after all. He hurt. His entire body throbbed with the memory of the pain the claustrophobic emotions had caused. But he wasn't lying on the ground, broken. He could feel everything was still attached. He could feel the yielding fuzziness of Sai pressed against his chest and the side of his face.

"Shit," He said as everything jolted into reason.

Sai must have grabbed him. He must have pulled him back onto the sidewalk out of the path of the oncoming car he'd been too preoccupied to notice. Sai had saved his life, while he had been yelling angrily at him for no real reason at all…

"God," He breathed. What an idiot he was. He turned his head, looking back over to the road where he had stood only a few seconds before. There, suspiciously flat through the middle, was his backpack. _That could have been me!_

"_Oh, my gosh!_" He heard a woman to the side of him say.

"_Idiot boy_," Uttered another.

"_What happened_?" Yet someone else.

"Sai," He murmured.

The fuzziness beneath his cheek shifted slightly, and something brushed smoothly over his hair.

:"Hikaru?":

Hikaru let out the breath he had seemed to be holding since he glimpsed the death of his bag. "Sai…"

:"It's all right, Hikaru. You're all right.":

Later, he couldn't recall how it was that he'd gotten home. When his mother met him at the foot of the stairs, surprised at the early arrival, his shakes had already stopped. He couldn't bring himself to tell her what had almost happened while she was smiling at him. Instead he turned and walked up to his room, Sai the comforting pale shadow at his side.

"To think," He said to Sai as his bedroom door closed behind them. "I almost became a shadow, myself."

Sai's eyes seemed to cry at him as he said that. His hands wrung themselves in his sleeves.

"Thanks, Sai." Hikaru smiled.

:"You're welcome, Hikaru.":

---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----

A/N – Woah! Took me a while! Three freaking years! And it's taken this long to get HikaGo on DVD? Pish! Anyway, this is definitely a Sai x Hika in progress, now. And there's already been a slight hint of disaster in the last parts of this chapter. More to come. More good stuff to come, too, not just the angst and arguments!

Now, all the replies! Eeek…

**Panatlantic** – _I've continued, and thanks so much for your review. You were the first! _

**Lauren-sama** – _Took your fantastic advice, and now the first chapter does flow much better. Sorry to hear about your bias, but everyone has at least one. I try to avoid it though, because due to them you can sometimes miss out on some really well-written stories._

**Shan2** – _Thanks for your positive and helpful review. I think the story idea needs a little exploring, too._

**Dark Cyradis** – _Once again, unfortunately, the DBZ style of writing attacked me. Don't worry. It's fixed, primed, and no longer ingrained. Goodbye to the repeated use of 'Kami'! However, thanks ever so much for your positive review. It was uplifting for me, and a great help._

**Morien Alexander** – _I think so too, hence the pairing! _

**EmEm, Aizhe, Cheska, Shinkako & Tian** – _Why thank you!_

**Lisette** – _You are totally awesome! A fantastic reviewer - and I'm sorry that you've had to wait so long for this chapter. I'm trying my best and treading carefully to get these characters as full as I can. I'm trying not to OOC, but I have no idea how well I'm accomplishing it._

**Mystic Wolf** – _I'm going to stick as much to the manga as possible! Otherwise I'll get completely carried away._

**Kokiri** – _Thanks for the review. I've had a fair amount of experience interpreting dreams, and I do my own and my families on a regular basis, and I've really just_ _used the main biggies in the Chapter One dream sequence. Hikaru might dream some more later, though. That could be fun._

**Stormy Rose** – _Thanks. I like this, too_.

**Mystic Light** – _I tried. I think I managed it quite well. What do you think?_

**KissMeInu** – _Cute name! And yeah, your puppy dog eyes got me adding more._

**Qem** – _You got me writing more, too! Never thought I'd get a review from someone years after I'd written the first chapter. Sweet as. Now let's see if I can resurrect some interest!_


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